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Okay. Folks who know me on these boards know that I'm a gun-totin' redneck from the wilds of Howard County, MD. I stock my safe with "assault weapons" and enough ammo to start a small African revolution. So when I say the epidemiological evidence of straw purchase mills like Realco in Forestville, MD disturbs me, I think it's worthy of a look.

Also, you make it sound like there are no laws or regulations on the use and issuance of firearms. There are Federal Checks, State Checks (in some situations), and plenty of laws that say what you can and cannot do with a weapon. Plus, cars kill 5x the number of people in America per year than guns do. Also, demographics are a factor in firearm deaths, but not auto related deaths. Not only are you 5x more likely to die to a car, but you're also more likely if you're not in a high risk category for firearm death (a majority killed with a firearm have a criminal record, for example).

Also, the reason why car insurance exists is because their use cannot be as heavily regulated as a firearm. You can have auto accidents, even ones that kill, and not be legally culpable (hence, "accident"). There's a rare situation where you have a "firearm accident" and have not broken some kind of law already (unlawful discharge, brandishing, etc). Even the incident where the 8-year old shot himself with an Uzi back in 2008, 4 were indited with illegally providing a prohibited weapon to a minor and involuntary manslaughter (to a tune of 30 years, if they were convicted of both charges). A quick search didn't turn up anything past the indictment (I don't know if it was dropped or still awaiting trial, plea, etc).

Yes, it is relatively easy to purchase and posses a firearm, it's VERY hard to use one legally. The law only allows for limited, usually highly controlled situations where a firearm can be legally discharged. We can probably name them all here:

Sport Shooting
Ranges
Hunting
Self Defense (State dependent)

Anything else? Definitely not everyday activities.

Yes, demographics are a factor in automobile related deaths. Victims are predominantly young and male...which just so happens to be the same demographics for gun deaths.

And I wouldn't tout the "cars kill 5x more people than guns" stat so much. See, there's about the same number of cars on the streets as guns (north of 250 million), but while the ownership of cars is pretty evenly distributed, gun ownership is not. While each household, on average owns more than one car, only 38% or so of all households own a gun. And gun ownership is highly concentrated with 20% of gun owners owning 55% of all the guns out there. So while nearly everyone either owns or has access to a car and uses it everyday, it's just not the same for guns.

What happens is that you end up with a fraction of a fraction of the gun owning population being responsible for ten or twelve thousand deaths a year. As the OP showed, a large chunk of those guns are legally purchased.

So while it's hard to legally use a gun as you say, you still haven't really done anything to address that gaping hole in gun laws and regulations, which is just how exactly does that percentage of the gun owners get the guns they use to kill people or commit hundreds of thousands of other crimes?

That's the challenge for the NRA: stop pretending that the system works to keep firearms out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them when it so clearly doesn't. Stop fighting the closing of loopholes that allow criminals to buy legal guns legally. Stop protecting FFLs who knowing sell to shady characters. In other words, just admit there's a dark side to guns and then work to minimize its negative impact.

I have trouble seeing something in the hands of 50 or so million Americans as a minority or a luxury. There are almost as many guns in the US as there are cars. As much as some gun owners or lobbyists like to paint themselves as some little segment of the population, threatened by our liberal overlords, that is not the case.

There is a serious disconnect and cultural divide on this. Many states had gun initiatives go to the polls, and the odd hyperbole that gets bandied about is strange to me. There were people in dire straights in Tennessee that had guns and hunting to thank for the meat in their freezer. The same could be said for most other states I think. On the same note, people in dire straights in Detroit are serving as straw men to buy guns for gangs.

My brother and I were joking about some of the correlative statistics. As crime has gone down in the US we have more swearing on prime time TV, more people smoking weed, more people drinking hard alcohol. So the solution to our crime problem is to act like sailors on shore leave.

I'm, as most of you know, a gun nut, but I find myself more and more sympathetic to OG's position. I don't think it would be a tremendous imposition on me to have to submit paperwork and undergo a basic criminal background check for every firearms purchase I make. I don't think it is horribly onerous for the government to demand that I prove tranfer of ownership or proper disposal of firearms no longer in my possession.

I agree that the system, by in large, is not working. As shown in the case of Realco, folks are clearly gaming the system on both the supply and demand side. Criminals get their girlfriends to purchase firearms and unconscionable vendors sell them despite overwhelming evidence that the transactions are fraudulent and likely to result in tragedy.

As a responsible gun owner and firearms enthusiast, I don't think my political efforts are best spent defending the likes of Realco.

I do not have an issue with a safety course requirement. This is probably the most sensible requirement, I need training and a license to hunt deer with a gun, not to buy one. And so far the mid west has seen the hunting industry grow.

You need clear title to buy and sell a house. They are mostly incapable of killing people outside of New England. Why not a gun? It floors me that you can buy and sell cars without clear title.

That's the challenge for the NRA: stop pretending that the system works to keep firearms out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them when it so clearly doesn't. Stop fighting the closing of loopholes that allow criminals to buy legal guns legally. Stop protecting FFLs who knowing sell to shady characters. In other words, just admit there's a dark side to guns and then work to minimize its negative impact.

I wonder how much the reluctance on the part of the NRA to close the loopholes is so people from strict gun law states like CA can get the gun they want from someplace else and bring it back to CA.

That's the challenge for the NRA: stop pretending that the system works to keep firearms out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them when it so clearly doesn't. Stop fighting the closing of loopholes that allow criminals to buy legal guns legally. Stop protecting FFLs who knowing sell to shady characters. In other words, just admit there's a dark side to guns and then work to minimize its negative impact.

I wonder how much the reluctance on the part of the NRA to close the loopholes is so people from strict gun law states like CA can get the gun they want from someplace else and bring it back to CA.

So you need loopholes because the state you live in doesn't think you need to own a .50 caliber sniper rifle? That you want it--not need it--is enough to keep loopholes open that put thousands of guns into criminal hands each year?

Pretty much. I think they should just do more to regulate bullets. The 2nd Amendment gives you the right to bear arms, but it doesn't say anything about ammunition which, back then, was really just a metal ball.

What's always been funny to me is how cities can ban fireworks in the interest of public safety but not guns.

Pretty much. I think they should just do more to regulate bullets. The 2nd Amendment gives you the right to bear arms, but it doesn't say anything about ammunition which, back then, was really just a metal ball.

What's always been funny to me is how cities can ban fireworks in the interest of public safety but not guns.

It's not like you can fire off a gun in city limits not in a range and expect not to have cops show up and charge you with something.

Pretty much. I think they should just do more to regulate bullets. The 2nd Amendment gives you the right to bear arms, but it doesn't say anything about ammunition which, back then, was really just a metal ball.

What's always been funny to me is how cities can ban fireworks in the interest of public safety but not guns.

It's not like you can fire off a gun in city limits not in a range and expect not to have cops show up and charge you with something.

Which is basically what I said on the last page, but it was ignored. Guns are moderately regulated (there are some loopholes), and their use is highly regulated (there are no loopholes).

Pretty much. I think they should just do more to regulate bullets. The 2nd Amendment gives you the right to bear arms, but it doesn't say anything about ammunition which, back then, was really just a metal ball.

What's always been funny to me is how cities can ban fireworks in the interest of public safety but not guns.

It's not like you can fire off a gun in city limits not in a range and expect not to have cops show up and charge you with something.

Which is basically what I said on the last page, but it was ignored. Guns are moderately regulated (there are some loopholes), and their use is highly regulated (there are no loopholes).

Wherever you two live must be really nice, because in my city many, if not most, of gunshots go unreported, as most of them happen in the poorer neighborhoods where people are acclimated to gun violence and tend not to call the cops unless someone gets killed. Even non-fatal shootings will sometimes go unreported until the victim shows up at the hospital with a hole in them. ...And when gunshots ARE reported, by the time police are on the scene the person who fire the shots is usually long gone. Last month in the downtown "Old Market" tourist district, THE most heavily policed part of town, there were two shootings- a drive-by that perforated a local business (no injuries) and a non-fatal shooting that happened literally within view of the downtown police station. The driver for the drive-by was caught and charged, but neither of the shooters were.

"They say that beauty is only skin deep but your skeleton looks pretty good to me.” -Jamal River

Given that in crimes like these all that is left at the scene is a bullet and a memory formed under duress, I would hardly blame it on shoddy policing. Unlike on television, cops can't pull DNA off a stiff breeze and crimals tend to not leave trails of semen everywhere. In my opinion we need better gun regulation and cities need to place the socioeconomic factors that lead to crime above making money off tourists and building stadiums.

"They say that beauty is only skin deep but your skeleton looks pretty good to me.” -Jamal River

Given that in crimes like these all that is left at the scene is a bullet and a memory formed under duress, I would hardly blame it on shoddy policing. Unlike on television, cops can't pull DNA off a stiff breeze and crimals tend to not leave trails of semen everywhere. In my opinion we need better gun regulation and cities need to place the socioeconomic factors that lead to crime above making money off tourists and building stadiums.

But, if you already are having problems with people breaking the law, what are more laws going to do?

I think ruhk found the answer in adressing why a segment of the population is turning to crime rather than the gun regulation.

Not that I disagree the "socioeconomic factors that lead to crime" need to be addressed, but I don't believe it's relevant to the discussion at hand. The argument is we need more gun regulation. I argue we have plenty of regulation (law). Then it was brought up that existing laws are not being followed. Is the answer even more regulation/laws? What will that achieve?

I think ruhk found the answer in adressing why a segment of the population is turning to crime rather than the gun regulation.

Not that I disagree the "socioeconomic factors that lead to crime" need to be addressed, but I don't believe it's relevant to the discussion at hand. The argument is we need more gun regulation. I argue we have plenty of regulation (law). Then it was brought up that existing laws are not being followed. Is the answer even more regulation/laws? What will that achieve?

Historical evidence indicates that it achieves nothing, and in fact the evidence leans pretty hard towards "more regulation is ineffective at best, and counter-productive at worst".

Much of the problem with this debate has to do with focusing on the wrong problem. The real issue is people getting shot; instead, we focus on gun ownership and regulation. How many people would care about gun control if no one was getting shot? Very few, I think. So that leaves us with the real question: how do we lower the incidence of people getting shot?

Ruhk is right - the answer lies in addressing why a segment of the population turns to crime, and thus to shooting people. And the reason for that is also pretty blindingly obvious - since drugs are illegal, people who service the drug market have no legal recourse when it comes to their businesses, and thus turn to violence to protect their markets and income. We saw precisely how this worked in the 1930s with alcohol prohibition and the explosion of crime and violence it created. The real mystery is why we seem to be unable to apply that lesson to today's drug prohibition.

I'd be willing to bet dinner that of those 2,500 traced guns, over 90% of them were used in drug-related crime, either robbery to finance a drug habit or a dispute between drug sellers. Anyone want to take that bet? Realco is certainly worth looking at, but we're kidding ourselves if we think that putting them out of business is even going to put the tiniest dent in the problem. Where there is demand, there will be supply - drug prohibition has demonstrated that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The True Remedy for the Fugitive Slave Bill is a good revolver, a steady hand, and a determination to shoot down any man attempting to kidnap. - Frederick Douglass

Plenty of middle-class folk use guns in murder-suicides. You can kill more people faster. And easier. I mean, how many times do you have to stab somebody to ensure they die? Add to the fact that if the person is bigger and stronger than you, there's a good chance that you'll die instead. How many bullets do you have to put into a person before they die? And the only reason to factor in their size is to determine what caliber of bullet to use.

There will always be crazy people killing other people. But, how many people can a crazy person with a gun kill? How many people can a crazy person with a sword or even a bow and arrow kill?

I think ruhk found the answer in adressing why a segment of the population is turning to crime rather than the gun regulation.

Not that I disagree the "socioeconomic factors that lead to crime" need to be addressed, but I don't believe it's relevant to the discussion at hand. The argument is we need more gun regulation. I argue we have plenty of regulation (law). Then it was brought up that existing laws are not being followed. Is the answer even more regulation/laws? What will that achieve?

It's absolutely relevant since the current regulations have numerous loopholes built into them by the NRA, such as selling weapons at gun shows without a background check, that make it easier for guns to get into the hands of criminals.

While the NRA likes to position itself as a champion of law and order, it has done a tremendous amount of legislative meddling that has had quite the opposite effect. The NRA has actively worked to restrict the ATF's ability to inspect firearms dealers; prevent firearm trace data from being released to the public so additional academic or public policy analysis can be done on it; repeal waiting periods; make it possible for juveniles to buy a gun without parental permission; block a database of ballistic imaging of every firearm sold (so that every gun can be traced by the bullets fired from it); and much, much more.

Additional regulation and laws will close the loopholes the gun lobby purposefully created as well as normalize the vastly different state rules. They will also provide law enforcement and regulatory agencies with the information they need to effectively do their jobs, such as who owns a particular firearm, where it came from, and what crimes it was used in.

Aetius wrote:

I'd be willing to bet dinner that of those 2,500 traced guns, over 90% of them were used in drug-related crime, either robbery to finance a drug habit or a dispute between drug sellers. Anyone want to take that bet? Realco is certainly worth looking at, but we're kidding ourselves if we think that putting them out of business is even going to put the tiniest dent in the problem. Where there is demand, there will be supply - drug prohibition has demonstrated that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

No takers because you'd likely win that bet. But I'd disagree with you that putting Realco out of business--along with any other dealer whose weapons get traced back to crimes--wouldn't have an impact on how easy it is for criminals to get guns.

A huge chunk of guns used in crimes come from dealers and a huge chunk of those come from about 10% of those dealers. They should lose their license immediately and every other dealer come to understand that if guns coming from their stores show up in crimes, they will also lose their licenses. The BATF should have its funding increased so it can do more frequent inspections of gun dealers and their records instead of the once every three or five years it is today. The funding, of course, should come from an increase on the fee for FFLs and higher taxes on firearms and ammunition.

And the inspections shouldn't just be limited to the paperwork and current inventory, it should also include the weapons the shop previously sold much like the analysis done of Realco's weapons. The BATF should make trace data (which should become mandatory for any firearm used in a crime) part of its inspection process and shut down any dealer who has a statistically unexplainable amount of their guns showing up in crimes.

It's also common knowledge that about half of all the guns used in crimes are purchased in states that have looser restrictions on buying firearms and are then exported to other states. The federal government needs to step in and, using the interstate commerce clause, normalize firearm regulations using the the states with the strictest regulations as the base template.

Since the vast majority of guns used in crimes aren't used by their original owners there should be a national firearms ownership database. Just like with cars, you shouldn't be able to sell your firearm to anyone without letting the state know who the new owner is and have the title officially transfered. Failure to do so should make you legally liable for any crime traced to that weapon and as well as make it possible to increase charges against anyone possessing a firearm that doesn't have an up-to-date title. The same should apply to people whose firearms are stolen and fail to report the theft.

All of these things wouldn't affect people who want to use legal firearms in legal ways.

My argument is not that these things cannot be done - they could (I would oppose them, but for the purposes of this argument it doesn't matter). My argument is that no matter what you do, it will not stop the flow of guns, or even have an appreciable effect. There is high demand amongst the criminals associated with the drug trade, and willing, efficient suppliers - the tepid legality of the current suppliers is a simply a minor detail of the current system.

Again, this attempted solution focuses on the wrong problem: guns are not the problem, people getting shot is the problem. I don't think that adding guns to the list of things that are smuggled in wholesale by the drug supply network is a useful step in reducing violent crime, as it would fuel the already obscene profits of the ever-more-efficient criminal networks. We need to deal with the causes of people shooting each other, and the vast majority of those causes boil down to one thing: drug prohibition. If we really care about keeping people from getting shot, we need to deal with that first, and then we can have a conversation about the other minor causes of violence.

The True Remedy for the Fugitive Slave Bill is a good revolver, a steady hand, and a determination to shoot down any man attempting to kidnap. - Frederick Douglass

I think there is tremendous danger in the argument that the criminals will get the guns no matter what. The logical extension of that is that it doesn't matter if someone like Realco is responsible for an ongoing tidal wave of gun sales to violent criminals. I have a moral and intellectual disagreement with that.

Plenty of middle-class folk use guns in murder-suicides. You can kill more people faster. And easier. I mean, how many times do you have to stab somebody to ensure they die? Add to the fact that if the person is bigger and stronger than you, there's a good chance that you'll die instead. How many bullets do you have to put into a person before they die? And the only reason to factor in their size is to determine what caliber of bullet to use.

There will always be crazy people killing other people. But, how many people can a crazy person with a gun kill? How many people can a crazy person with a sword or even a bow and arrow kill?

Plenty? Can you show me where that statistic is? Does it happen? Sure, but I wouldn't say it's an appreciable percentage of gun crime. Right now the highest number of both perpetrators and victims of gun crimes are felons. If anything the high amount of guns in society are thinning out the dredges of society, not innocent/hard working Americans.

Aetius wrote:

I'd be willing to bet dinner that of those 2,500 traced guns, over 90% of them were used in drug-related crime

It's been a long debate on the academic side of criminology of how much crime is related to drugs overall (with it leaning towards "a lot"). Unfortunately, the current crime tracking systems do not track this. It's something that is supposed to be remedied in the new national crime tracking system - if and when that thing ever gets deployed.

I think there is tremendous danger in the argument that the criminals will get the guns no matter what. The logical extension of that is that it doesn't matter if someone like Realco is responsible for an ongoing tidal wave of gun sales to violent criminals. I have a moral and intellectual disagreement with that.

Danger? The real danger lies in not accepting the reality of the situation and continuing to take ineffectual action - people are dying and whole generations of young people are being criminalized while we're futzing around with gun control. We can't even keep millions of human beings from entering the country illegally, let alone small concealable objects like guns or drugs. Far more authoritarian and totalitarian states than ours with far more resources dedicated to border control have tried and failed to prevent smuggling, human and otherwise. This is not something we can make go away by policy - it simply is the way it is.

Think of it this way: Realco would have no market it if weren't for prohibition, and thus there would be no tidal wave of gun sales to violent criminals. I have a moral and intellectual disagreement with people getting shot, no matter where the guns come from. It's not that it doesn't matter, morally - Realco is definitely morally wrong to sell guns to criminals. But cracking down on Realco has little to no effect on the larger problem. It's like trying to fix your leaky shower by working on your toilet: yes, the two are connected, but there's pretty much nothing you can do to the toilet that will stop the shower from leaking. You've got to cut off the water at the source.

The True Remedy for the Fugitive Slave Bill is a good revolver, a steady hand, and a determination to shoot down any man attempting to kidnap. - Frederick Douglass

I think there is tremendous danger in the argument that the criminals will get the guns no matter what. The logical extension of that is that it doesn't matter if someone like Realco is responsible for an ongoing tidal wave of gun sales to violent criminals. I have a moral and intellectual disagreement with that.

Danger? The real danger lies in not accepting the reality of the situation and continuing to take ineffectual action - people are dying and whole generations of young people are being criminalized while we're futzing around with gun control. We can't even keep millions of human beings from entering the country illegally, let alone small concealable objects like guns or drugs. Far more authoritarian and totalitarian states than ours with far more resources dedicated to border control have tried and failed to prevent smuggling, human and otherwise. This is not something we can make go away by policy - it simply is the way it is.

Think of it this way: Realco would have no market it if weren't for prohibition, and thus there would be no tidal wave of gun sales to violent criminals. I have a moral and intellectual disagreement with people getting shot, no matter where the guns come from. It's not that it doesn't matter, morally - Realco is definitely morally wrong to sell guns to criminals. But cracking down on Realco has little to no effect on the larger problem. It's like trying to fix your leaky shower by working on your toilet: yes, the two are connected, but there's pretty much nothing you can do to the toilet that will stop the shower from leaking. You've got to cut off the water at the source.

Those are entirely different issues though. One can be entirely for decriminalizing of drugs AND for dealing with terrible offenders like Realco. Moreover, it is more than a bit dishonest to say that stopping a notorious source like Realco would have no effect on the flow of guns to criminals. Whatever you believe about our drug policy, it doesn't at all excuse the actions of Realco or the regulatory environment that allows those actions to continue.

My argument is not that these things cannot be done - they could (I would oppose them, but for the purposes of this argument it doesn't matter). My argument is that no matter what you do, it will not stop the flow of guns, or even have an appreciable effect. There is high demand amongst the criminals associated with the drug trade, and willing, efficient suppliers - the tepid legality of the current suppliers is a simply a minor detail of the current system.

The "willing, efficient suppliers" you speak of are FFL holders. Without that piece of paper they can't sell firearms and it becomes a whole hell of a lot harder for criminals to get the guns in the first place. Fewer guns, fewer guns used in crimes. Only 10 to 15% of guns used in crimes are "illegal" guns in that they were stolen from someone. The rest are legally purchased--typically by proxy, often more than one at a time--from a handful of FFLs that are identified by gun trace data.

Shutting down those FFLs shuts down the source of cheap firearms at the source. Then you introduce additional regulation to prevent the unreported transfer of firearms from one person to another since this is really how criminals get their guns: they are legally purchased and then resold or, more likely, handed over to the criminals who organized the gun purchasing ring to begin with.

Aetius wrote:

Again, this attempted solution focuses on the wrong problem: guns are not the problem, people getting shot is the problem. I don't think that adding guns to the list of things that are smuggled in wholesale by the drug supply network is a useful step in reducing violent crime, as it would fuel the already obscene profits of the ever-more-efficient criminal networks. We need to deal with the causes of people shooting each other, and the vast majority of those causes boil down to one thing: drug prohibition. If we really care about keeping people from getting shot, we need to deal with that first, and then we can have a conversation about the other minor causes of violence.

I might go along with you except for the fact that it's really damn hard to get shot without a gun being involved.

Besides, where are the criminals going to smuggle the guns from since 11 of the top 20 manufacturers of handguns (because handguns are really what we're talking about when we talk about guns and crime) are based in the US? And I'd take criminals having to try to smuggle guns wholesale into this country if only because it would make them expensive as hell at the street level. Again, basic economics says that price increases result in decreased demand. Higher prices, fewer guns.

And then there's the fact that smuggling guns isn't quite the same as smuggling drugs. At the very least guns don't exactly fit the existing drug supply pipeline. For one thing there's not a bunch of handgun manufacturers in Columbia or Mexico, meaning the weapons would need to be sourced from somewhere else (most likely Asia or Eastern Europe) and then somehow integrated into the existing smuggling operation. Next guns would actually cost the cartels money since they are manufactured. At the end of the day, losing a shipment of weed or coke is no big thing because it's a renewable resource. You can't grow more handguns. Then there's the issue that criminals would have to decide what they're going to use their finite smuggling bandwidth for: a handgun they could get a couple of hundred dollars for, a couple of pounds of weed that will fetch a couple of thousand, or a kilo of coke that would make them $20 or $25K?

Aetius wrote:

Danger? The real danger lies in not accepting the reality of the situation and continuing to take ineffectual action - people are dying and whole generations of young people are being criminalized while we're futzing around with gun control. We can't even keep millions of human beings from entering the country illegally, let alone small concealable objects like guns or drugs. Far more authoritarian and totalitarian states than ours with far more resources dedicated to border control have tried and failed to prevent smuggling, human and otherwise. This is not something we can make go away by policy - it simply is the way it is.

Think of it this way: Realco would have no market it if weren't for prohibition, and thus there would be no tidal wave of gun sales to violent criminals. I have a moral and intellectual disagreement with people getting shot, no matter where the guns come from. It's not that it doesn't matter, morally - Realco is definitely morally wrong to sell guns to criminals. But cracking down on Realco has little to no effect on the larger problem. It's like trying to fix your leaky shower by working on your toilet: yes, the two are connected, but there's pretty much nothing you can do to the toilet that will stop the shower from leaking. You've got to cut off the water at the source.

Now who's not accepting the reality of the situation? Do you really think we're going to end the prohibition of drugs anytime soon? Hell, the most progressive state in the country couldn't even legalize weed--even when we desperately needed the tax revenue that would come from it. We are likely *generations* from truly legalizing pot in this country and, even then, the country will most likely never be comfortable with legalizing coke, heroin, or harder drugs.

So what do we do in the meantime? Nothing? Or do we tackle things that are at least in our control or achievable, like making gun show sales illegal, shutting down sketchy FFLs, and stopping interstate 'smuggling' by normalizing state laws and regulations? Sure, it's 'futzing', but it's futzing that will save lives because somebody wasn't able to get their hands on a cheap gun.